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With his brand of activist investing as popular as ever, Carl Icahn has consistently been beating the stock market indexes and the vast majority of richly-paid hedge fund managers over the last five calendar years. He is on his way to doing it again in 2014.

After a tough first quarter that saw Icahn’s investment fund, which he uses to bet on stocks with his own money and money belonging to his publicly-traded Icahn Enterprises, fall by 0.4%, Icahn rebounded in a big way in the spring. Icahn’s investment fund returned 10.7% in the second quarter, according to comments SungHwan Cho, Icahn Enterprises’ chief financial officer, recently made on a conference call.

Icahn finished the first half of 2014 with his investment fund up 10.2%. That beats the return of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which returned 6.05% over the same time period. It also crushed the average hedge fund manager, who returned 3.2% this year through June, according to HFR.

In the second quarter, Icahn’s investment fund was fueled by its large position in , which saw its stock rise by 21% between the end of March and the end of June. Icahn increased his already big bet on Apple when its stock weakened to $72 at the end of January, buying $500 million more of Apple’s shares. The stock now changes hands for $94. Apple is by far Icahn’s largest trading position. His investment fund also benefited in the second quarter from its stake in , a company whose direction has been significantly changed by Icahn, who helped push out its founding CEO, Aubrey McClendon.

Icahn’s track record in recent years is even more impressive because his portfolio has been largely hedged, in a way refuting the notion put out by some hedge fund proponents who have argued that it’s not reasonable for properly hedged portfolios to keep up with the broad surge of the stock market in recent years. “We are very pleased with these returns given the negative impact that our hedging activities have had on performance,” said Icahn’s lieutenant, Keith Cozza, on the recent conference call. “Without giving effect to our hedges, our long-only positions increased by 17% for the quarter.” At the end of the second quarter, Icahn’s investment fund had a net long exposure of 39%.

On the surface, Icahn has had some good and bad things impact his portfolio so far in the third quarter. The good: Icahn disclosed a 9.4% stake in in June and in July the company agreed to be bought by Dollar Tree for $8.5 billion. The bad: Herbalife. Icahn is the biggest shareholder of the controversial diet shake seller that is under assault from hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman. The company reported some bad-looking second-quarter financial figures in July—its shares have fallen by 20% since June 30.